ABSTRACT
The emergence of a labour market, both in relation to the public sector and the urban workforce as a whole, has greatly enhanced workers' freedom to choose jobs. Highly wary of the potential explosiveness of the reforms' impact on workers, the regime, while promoting the interests of both the public economy and foreign and private capital, has modified the role of official unions under the All China Federation of Trade Unions. The activists' ideological orientations have varied widely, ranging from social-democracy/syndicalism or even faith in anti-bureaucratic socialism to pro-private capitalist humanitarian liberal positions. In late December 1991, over a dozen political activists in Beijing set up a preparatory committee of the Free Trade Union of China, as well as forming the underground Chinese Social Democratic Party, Chinese Liberal Democratic Party, and Chinese Progressive Alliance. Organizing independent unions in China is much more difficult than in Poland in the past.
